This is NOT a call for artists. There won’t be anything animated on this anytime soon. I have a story idea I just want to share.
Here’s the short version…
G O D B U N N Y
Godbunny is a comedy about 3 guys who use a giant robot to battle an evil scientist. The robot was created by a goddess and her daughter.
Any comments, criticism, or questions so far?
Question. Where’s the story? :o
The general story arc goes as such (again keeping things short as possible).
A new wrestler debuts on a wresting TV show. The show gets really popular. The evil scientist runs a educational program. The scientist’s show loses on ratings and gets canceled. The scientist goes crazy and starts building robots to wreck havok on the world. The 3 guys ( one of them is the wrestler ) come together to save the world. They need help though. So the two goddesses build Godbunny and tells the trio to use that to fight. They use it. They save the world.
The End.
Any other questions, comments, or suggestions?
Write the whole story first, then discuss it! :o
I assure you that I have written the story.
See:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/3DMovies/Index#Drawing_and_Sketching
One of the key things I took out of this section was the whole idea of not “pushing” my idea on people. That’s why I’ve been given brief and high-level simple summaries on what the story is all about.
Take this for example. The scientist, Dr. Shadowbone, has a short-tempered understudy named Cindy who happens to be Ian’s fraternal twin sister. Ian is one of the trio who go by the name “Team Godbunny”.
I could divulge pages and pages more about the story, the characters, and their quirks but what good is it if the overall plot is fundamentally flawed? That’s why I want to keep things as brief and high level as I can. To do otherwise, to me, seems flat out obnoxious.
That is a refreshing plot. You can fill in the blanks however you will I guess. My personal taste goes to good original dialogue, rich character development and motivitation.
Nemo has the simplest plot of all. Father lost son, go search for him and found him. But the story properly showed motivation, there is great character content and motivation.
Thanks for understanding, Toontje. I’ll continue to polish the dialog I already have. I’ll be routing for you and your stories as well. May they be awesome.
OK Sorry! I am too old for this I think, I’ll Shut up now!!! :-?
Thanks for sharing that story idea. It totaly changed my view on the world, I definitly have become a better person.
Typical quest->distress->victory plot. No reason not to work as a piece of entertainment, as long as the characters are believable and likeable.
Hmmm. Two posts mentioning importance of good characters. Okay, here are my character profiles. No images at the moment. Sorry.
The Robot
http://www.philipcote.com/docs/GodbunnyCharacterSheet.pdf
Team Godbunny (Good Guys)
http://www.philipcote.com/docs/BeefcakeCharacterSheet.pdf
http://www.philipcote.com/docs/IanCharacterSheet.pdf
http://www.philipcote.com/docs/KogutCharacterSheet.pdf
Bad Guys
http://www.philipcote.com/docs/ShadowboneCharacterSheet.pdf
http://www.philipcote.com/docs/CindyCharacterSheet.pdf
Goddesses
http://www.philipcote.com/docs/AlthenaCharacterSheet.pdf
http://www.philipcote.com/docs/JessicaCharacterSheet.pdf
Hmmmm… no comments on my character profiles? Very well. I guess I’ll just graciously concede that they aren’t very good and leave it at that.
Cheers.
to the contrary I find your profiles to be well thought out and very… well… 3 dimensional…
Joking aside, i found this thread to be quite inspirational to me in my own quest to… go and do likewise
The Godbunny story is complete. It’s basically my attempt to do an animated comedy using nothing but text.
I hope you like it. Comments welcome.
To muchhhh plot to read
write it into a script format
as example
http://www.simplyscripts.com/WR_format.html
I’ll help ya, pm me and we talk.
If you are making a short film alone, or with a few other people, make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew. My personal advice would be to aim for something 2-3 minutes in length. If you are working alone, there is far less need for scetching and planning. You know what the charactors look like - why draw them when you can go right ahead and make them.
The info on that wiki-page about frame-rates isn’t very good either. 25 FPS is the standerd in Europe, but the Americas and Japan use 30 FPS for video. Film runs at 24 FPS. Traditional animators (2D and stop-motion) use 12 FPS, unless things are moving really fast, then they use 24 FPS. This film runs at 12 FPS and is hardly “choppy”. Computers run at all sorts of differant speeds.
Thanks for the comments. I don’t pretend to have the experience or resources to make a film out of the whole thing. If anything, I’d make short bits of animation based on bits and pieces of the story.
But if the story sucks, then I don’t really have much to even derive from. Hence the reason for the post was to get some input on this.
This story has a lot of components. As a writer, my advice to you is to pick one section of the overall story, then tell that small section well while attempting to build enough of the backstory into it so that it makes sense. Think of it as putting a small window against a large painting: you want to find part of the painting that will look interesting in it’s own right through the window, while suggesting that there is even more outside the viewport that fits.
You will have to do this especially if you plan to even animate.
Also, you should learn screenplay format.
Almost no story inherently “sucks”. It’s what you do with it that matters.
Questions that make me wonder if you were high while conceptualizing this, though: why a wrestler? where do the goddesses come from and why are they needed in this story?
Personally, I think a better approach to this would be:
Fade in on man crawling into the sewers, trying to escape from something. In the background, we see a devastated cityscape. Label on screen reads: “5 weeks into armageddon”. Voice over narration to the effect of: “I remember a time when I didn’t have to prowl the sewers for food. I remember a time before Dr. XXXX turned his robots loose on us. I remember a time when professional wrestlers like me weren’t hunted down like the lowest of dogs. Why did he do it? Why did he try to destroy us allaaaaaa!”
The crawling guy falls through a whole in the sewer tunnel floor, finding himself in a pristine chamber. When he looks up, he sees the awesome robot labeled “GODBUNNY” standing before him, waiting for a driver. Not understanding where it came from, he nonetheless recognizes its potential for combat.
From there, he interacts with the GB computer personality to learn where it came from, etc., and uses GB to begin to fight back against the Drs. evil robots. Of course, GB will get it’s butt kicked until it learns to use wrestling moves…
This way, your reader/viewer is immediately involved with the guy running away from something dangerous an unseen. Also, they should perhaps be amused that pro wrestlers seem to be singled out for extermination. Then, there is the mystery of a powerful artifact. Most of the elements you had initially still fit, but constraining your window (this is called the “subjective story”) can make it a much more entertaining experience.
I agree with you on the goddesses. They probably aren’t necessary for the story and I could probably have Ian do most of the key stuff the goddess’ did.
Picking one section and then putting in backstory can be a good idea but in the context of Godbunny, it seems dangerous. It already has three flashbacks telling backstories for the Ian and Kogut characters. Kogut’s flashback could probably be eliminated without losing too much. But taking out the flashbacks explaining Cindy and Ian’s sibling rivalry would be a lot more difficult.